Word.ws English Dictionary

chemical imbalance

chemical imbalance noun: used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see chemical, imbalance.

Noun

chemical imbalance (plural chemical imbalances)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see chemical, imbalance.
  2. (euphemistic) Mental illness.
    • Anyone who knew him well would suspect he had a chemical imbalance. He had been unhappy recently. And there was a history of suicide in the family; his mother had tried to kill herself.2009, Rob Warden, Steven Drizin, True Stories of False Confessions, →ISBN, page 28

Forms of chemical imbalance

pluralchemical imbalances

Origin of chemical imbalance

The sense "mental illness" is due to the fact that some mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.

Questions about chemical imbalance

What does chemical imbalance mean?
Chemical imbalance means used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see chemical, imbalance.
What part of speech is chemical imbalance?
Chemical imbalance is a noun.
What is the plural of chemical imbalance?
The plural of chemical imbalance is chemical imbalances.

Words near chemical imbalance in the dictionary

  1. chemical hazards
  2. chemical hood
  3. chemical hoods
  4. chemical horn
  5. chemical horns
  6. chemical imbalance
  7. chemical imbalances
  8. chemical indicator
  9. chemical indicators
  10. chemical kinetics
  11. chemical laser

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: chemical imbalance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “chemical imbalance.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/chemical_imbalance. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.